< Back to Volume 12, Number 4
Volume 12: Number 4: Article 3
Techno-Dowsing: Developing a Physiological Response System to Improve Psi Training
Paul Stevens, Koestler Parapsychology Unit, Department of Psychology,
7 George Square, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH8 9JZ United
Kingdom1
Working under the assumption that psi results from the detection
of a weak energetic signal propagating in space and/or time, physiological
responses from 20 unselected volunteer participants were recorded. An
artificial neural network (ANN) was first trained to recognize a variety
of recognition responses, then used to predict a precognitive psi
target based on participants' physiological responses to concepts related
to the target. Measures taken were peripheral blood flow, electrodermal
activity and electro-encephalographic activity. The ANN trained on all
participants' data successfully reduced the possible target pool from
8 to 2 in 8 out of 20 cases. For individually trained networks, this
increased to 11 out of 20 cases. Although non-significant, ANN prediction
was more successful for those participants exhibiting psychological
androgyny (t = 1.194, df = 17, p = 0.125 1-tailed,
non-significant) and field independence (t = -1.320, df
=18, p = 0.102 1-tailed, non-significant), as predicted. It is
concluded that this is a viable and useful approach that would benefit
further study.
1Data was collected for this study in 1995 while
the author was on a three-month fellowship at the University of Nevada,
Las Vegas. The author may be contacted via e-mail at Paul.Stevens @ ed.ac.uk
or at the address above.
Keywords: dowsing, psi, precognition, physiology response
FULL TEXT:
Techno-Dowsing: Developing a Physiological Response System to Improve Psi Training
